VinTheAttendant

The whole Miner's Revenge snafu has been ridiculous. Hundreds of people went through that maze this season, and nobody felt the need to speak up over how offended they are until literally the last minute (then suddenly everyone realizes they're offended too)? The media sure has felt the need to knock down Halloween theme park attractions this year.

I take forever to transition, but it doesn't really help that I only have a hand-me-down DVD player in my apartment. How many DVDs or Blu-Rays do you purchase each year? About 12 DVDs, mostly older stuff off the discount racks. Maybe 4 Blu-Ray/DVD combos when I go home. How many digital downloads do you purchase each year? So far, 0. In my old apartments, my internet connection was too crappy to download movies (I would have to watch Youtube videos in 360p or less). I have much faster internet now, but I'm not signed up anywhere. Is a 1.5gb - 2 gb file "too big" for you to download to your device? Not at all. I have an external hard drive I can move larger files to if I need the space for other things.

Slime

Discovery Channel

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

He's definitely trolling. While his insincerity is a bit annoying, I must admit that I got a huge laugh when he said Scream! was better themed than Dominator.

Iron Shark

We left Dorney Park at midnight on Friday and were looking for somewhere to eat that was still open. We stumbled upon John's Plain and Fancy Diner in Quakertown, about 20 minutes from the park on RT 309. It's open 24/7, has a very classic diner feel to it, prices were decent, portions were surprisingly big, and everyone in our group seemed to like their food (the fries are really good). My only complaint was that the service was rather slow, but it was 1 in the morning and the place was actually kind of busy.

This was a great year, so I'll give it a whirl. *Best moment - A bit of backstory: my sister and I decided to do our first road trip on our own and tackled a few parks between home and around Cedar Point. We were having lousy weather all week, but it was not stopping us from having fun. However, some strong thunderstorms were expected on the day we visit Waldameer, a new park for us. Up until about four hours prior to opening, the weather was predicted to be abysmal, and we were worried the park would close out of precaution; but it then switched to being cloudy, about 10% chance of rain, and maybe even some sun later. So we took the chance, headed to the park, and there were literally only 9 vehicles in the parking lot (six cars and three buses). The moment we got to the front gate and the smiling women working admission told us the park was open, that was the biggest "YESSSSS!!!!" moment of the trip. The park was empty, and we got a ton of rides on Ravine Flyer II. *Best individual ride - Intimidator 305, my new #1 favorite coaster. Just a few months before, I reaffirmed my love of Millennium Force, and I still love it to death. I honestly didn't believe that I305 would top it, but I was hooked after my very first ride. Also to be noted, I visited Kings Dominion while I305 was closed for its temper tantrum, and I was certain I would not be able to ride it before the end of the season. But one week after it reopened, I managed to find a ride down to the park, and from there, it's history. *Funniest moment - There were a lot, but if I had to choose one, I would say that riding Demon Drop at Dorney with one of my friends for the first time is up there. He's a relatively laid back guy, so it really surprised me when he began to legitimately freak out on Demon Drop. The result, a loud,terror-filled scream as our car plummeted. Add my terror-filled scream to the mix, and then it's all laughs once the ride hit the brakes. *Scariest moment - Didn't really have one. I guess the closest thing is riding the Star Flyer at PNE Playland. I have acrophobia, and Playland likes to spin their Star Flyer really fast. It freaked me out, but I had my friend next to me to make fun of me *Favorite individual park visit - Probably PNE Playland. A few years ago, I started talking online to a TPR member from the Vancouver area. We found a lot in common with each other and instantly became friends; though considering we lived on opposite ends of the continent, we never thought we'd ever meet. Well this year, I was in the neighborhood, and we finally got to hang out in a park in real life. We both had an amazing day, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like the day we had was actually a dream because it was too good to have actually existed. Good friends will do that to you sometimes. *Nerdiest moment - In the line for Volcano: The Blast Coaster, one of the ride attendants decided to play trivia with the queue. She asked how old Volcano was, and I was quick to declare that it was 15 years old. I felt like I won a game show despite having won nothing and nobody around me actually caring (I thought it was cute when a younger girl ahead of us guessed that it was four years old). *Best non-coaster related thing to happen at a park - I guess it would be from our first day at Cedar Point. We had managed to get on a lot of rides during Early Entry, but heavy rain and thunderstorms closed down many rides as the day progressed. Rides were down for about four hours, and then the sun made an unexpected visit. Within an hour, all of the coasters we wanted to ride but couldn't reopened. *Best thing to happen on a park trip outside of the park - It wasn't the best at the time, but it quickly became our favorite funny thing to happen outside of the park. When we were leaving our hotel in Sandusky for Kings Island, we decided to grab some breakfast at the first Dunkin Donuts we saw. We found one almost instantly, but it was on the left side of the road, so we decided to get do the next one....... The very next Dunkin Donuts was right outside Kings Island. We did stop by a McDonalds prior to arrival, but it was funny how we had expectations of finding something so prevalent on the East Coast, only to barely find one in Ohio. Go figure. *Favorite new experience - A tie between experiencing Ravine Flyer II and Playland's Coaster. I had heard good things about both woodies, but I was not expecting such an awesome experience out of both of them. They were both incredibly smooth, so fast paced, loads of airtime, and both exceeded my expectations. *Anything else you'd like to mention as a highlight - We visited Kings Dominion the week after I305 reopened. It was during Haunt on a Saturday, so we were expecting ridiculous crowds. As it would turn out, the Virginia State Fair happened to be right next door that weekend, and a lot of the crowds we were expecting wound up going there, leading to very tolerable lines for a Saturday. One of the results was that my sister and I would take a side on Rebel Yell and race each other. Overall, great year for coaster riding, maybe even the best. (Sorry this post is so long)

I like listening to Ride the Lightning as much as the next person, and it's much better than most of the music I hear in my area; but unless James Hetfield himself is performing live downstairs, I have absolutely no interest in listening to Metallica being played full blast throughout the house at 4 in the morning when I have to wake up early. I swear, sometimes I wish our neighborhood would just get power outages on certain evenings just so my neighbors can shut up for a bit while I'm trying to sleep. It's even worse when they play the same two-chord song over and over again every time they light up.

Talon at Dorney Park last night When we got to the park around 7:30, the ride was closed (bummer, it's my favorite coaster in the park), and we didn't see trains running on it all night. But just 10 minutes before the park closed, as we were walking by it, we saw a train suddenly go through the coarse. Thus, we were able to line up and get a ride on it to finish up an already awesome evening.

Failure

Muse - "Assassin (Grand Omega Bosses Edit)"

I think this may be the funniest typo ever! (Unless that actually happened in the movie? I don't know, I haven't seen it lol) I saw two movies for the first time recently: Gravity: Everything you hear about the effects in this movie is 100% true. The movie looks spectacular and gives a lot of depth to the vacuum of space. I like how the movie tried to be as scientifically accurate as possible, even resorting to sacrificing the wonderful sounds of explosions to try and put you into Sandra Bullock's space suit. The acting is great, the score is great, the camera-work is simply magnificent; the only thing preventing me from loving this movie is the fact that it's just a bit too straight-forward. I'm not saying it isn't complex, but it's also not the most provocative. I'm also not saying that these straight-forward movies are inferior to other substance-stuffed flicks, they're not, in fact Gravity is better than a lot of those movies; but it just wasn't the kind of movie I fall in love with. Regardless, I'm glad I saw it, and I'm glad that it turned out to be a huge success. Eight Legged Freaks: Yeah, kind of an odd movie to transition to, I know. I have been avoiding seeing this movie for quite some time because I have relatively minor arachnophobia. The sight of spiders, including realistic fake spiders or print, gives me a very unnerving feeling. I still have trouble not freaking out on Forbidden Journey. But I decided to give Eight Legged Freaks a watch because I do love comedic throw-backs to B-Movies. After watching it, the best way to describe this movie is.......it's a cartoon. It is a live action cartoon, and it knows damn well that it is. The sight of the spiders did not tinge me in the slightest, probably because of how CG they looked, and like I said, how cartoonish they were portrayed. I was surprised at how many laughs I got as the movie progressed to the point that I forgot it was also labelled as a horror movie. It's dumb, it's fun, but I was also surprised at how few scares there were. Unlike other comedic takes on B-Movies, Eight Legged Freaks lacked any good suspense; which is a shame, because there were many likable characters in the movie that could have benefited from just a few more serious moments. Overall, I'd watch it again just to see how much ridiculousness I missed the first time.

Circus Circus

Monty Python

Kevin Bacon

Fruit Salad

Peanuts

1. Intimidator 305 2. Millennium Force 3. Bizarro (SFNE) 4. Skyrush 5. Boulder Dash 6. El Toro 7. Ravine Flyer II 8. Nitro 9. Coaster (P.N.E. Playland) 10. Maverick

Intimidator 305 two weeks ago. Such a good ride!

Y2K

T-Rex

The only "New for 2013" coaster I rode this year was Gatekeeper, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like others have said, lowering my expectations helped; but even before my ride, following the construction of it got me pumped for it. In a sense, I think I enjoy it the same way I enjoy stupid movies. While Gatekeeper is nowhere near touching my top ten list, I did think it was good enough to purchase a t-shirt afterwards.

For the record, I enjoy Robb's commentary